A glistening trail of fresh ice slid out from under the Zamboni as I watched the mechanical snail make its rounds in the empty arena. Everyone had finally gone home; best thing they did all day. It had been a particularly shitty day. My grades came in and they were utter shit and then Mila thought it'd be hilarious to carve up the ice like a damn hockey player showing off the moves her meat-head of a boyfriend so uselessly taught her. My skate hit one of her gouges coming down from a quad and I had crashed, biting my tongue and leaving fat red drops all over the ice. Mila didn't feel at all sorry; she just laughed when Yakov yelled at me for doing the quad in the first place, it being one too many past his strict limit.
The blood was now smoothed away along with the gouge. The Zamboni made it look so easy. One steady pass and it was gone, the ice pristine and whole once again. Boris waved as he drove the Zamboni off the ice without looking back to force me into returning it. I flicked my hand up at his unconcerned back. Good guy. Knows his shit. Always sets the right depth to get every divot. The garage doors shut and it was finally silent. I waited for the ice to harden without some asshole fucking it up before it was ready like stupid Viktor loved to do. Impatient asshole.
"Hey, Yurochka! Glad you're still here tonight."
My hands tightened on the boards as my body cringed away from the voice wrecking the peace that had just hardened. Apparently thinking of the devil works just as well. "Go away, old man. I don't want you here."
"Still pissed about that fall, huh? Still, there's no need to be so hurtful. I just came to skate with you." He lifted a foot to grab his guard from his skate.
"Hey! Just wait one more minute, asshole! It's not ready yet!"
"It's fine, Yurochka. You worry too much." He grabbed off the other guard and crushed his blades into the clear ice.
"Asshole," I muttered into my shirt low enough for him not to hear me as I followed him onto the ice. It was fucked up already anyway. He knew I liked skating after everyone had gone home so he made it his mission to be here as many nights as he could to wreck that even though he had mornings as his sacred time alone on the ice. He should have understood better. I would have told him to piss off with a little more conviction, but the guy does know his shit. In between his Suzie sunshine chattering, he'd sometimes give useful advice. I'd be an idiot to pass up free coaching from Viktor Nikiforov. Well, it wasn't exactly free. It cost my sanity, but whatever. Small price to pay to one day use his own words to kick his ass.
"You know, that's your biggest problem. You try too hard all the time." Showoff prima donna set up a quad and landed it cleanly without a damn thought running through his head. "You need to lighten up a bit. You're always so tense. You look like a little fishy jumping out of the water to get away from the monster under you. Relax, there's nothing out here to get you. The monsters can't break through the ice. This is our home up here." He swirled away into some improvised step sequence. He uses the strangest analogies sometimes. Almost like he was aware of something outside of winning. "Come on, Yurochka, skate like you're a nice, jiggly kholodets!" Never mind.
"Fill your own head with meat jelly. Keep mine out of it."
"Your second biggest problem, not knowing how to take useful advice. You decide before you've tried it whether or not it's useful. That's a really bad habit, you know. You'll miss out on a lot of good things that way."
"Yeah, it's better than trying every single stupid idea that pops into your head. You have a brain for a reason. You're supposed to use it to filter out the crap before you shit all over the world."
"Ouch. Yurochka's in fine form tonight. Is there something bothering you?"
"Yeah, you." I tried to skate away from him to the other end of the rink, but he caught up to me with two easy strokes.
"Hey, you can tell me what's bothering you, you know. I won't be a jerk about it. Is a girl giving you trouble? Other than Mila, I mean. Or a boy?"
"I'm not gay!" He was closer than I thought he was when I turned back to shout at him and I ended up crashing right into him. He caught me from falling and held his hands over my shoulders to steady me.
"Woah, easy there, kitten."
"Get off me." I knocked his hand off my shoulder and tried to skate away again.
"It's okay to be gay, you know. You don't have to act like I just insulted you by offering it as an option. I'm gay."
"No shit, Sherlock." There was a longer beat of silence than I was expecting. I looked over my shoulder. His stupid heart mouth was shut for once. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
"What's going on, Yurochka? I'm just trying to help you."
"I don't-" I wanted to say, 'I don't want your help,' but that wasn't entirely true. "Just butt out of my life. If you want to talk about skating, that's fine."
"I tried talking about skating. You didn't want to hear it."
"Talking about skating that doesn't involve stupid ideas," I clarified.
"And we're back to the start again. Talking with you feels like being a speed skater. Lots of aggression, same damn circle."
"So then go jump like a meat jelly fish and leave me alone."
"No, no, no. You got that all mixed up. You're supposed to feel like kholodets so you don't jump like a fish. No one wants to see a fish flopping on a slab of ice. And really, kholodets isn't the best analogy. It doesn't have enough control, but you have too much control so you need to be more like jelly."
"What are you saying? Do you even know?"
"Yeah, I'm saying relax more, you angry little punk. And listen to your elders. You know, I do know a thing or two about good skating." He pushed hard off the ice to turn away from me into another series of turns and spins on the ice.
I skated a small circle watching him move trying to pick up some tricks without his mouth running nonsense along with them into my head until he came to a stop and just stared at me from across the short end of the rink. We faced off for a minute before I sighed and tried to focus on picking out the good bits from the dump truck of words he always spilled. "How do I relax? There's so many things to think of, so many body parts to control all at once."
"That's the problem. You're trying to think of them all. You need to feel them. You need to let your body's autopilot take care of the skating so your mind can be free to think of the performance."
"What do I need to think about the performance for? It's just getting the right steps in the right place. That's all the performance is made of."
"No, it's not. The performance has to mean something. If it doesn't mean anything, it's not worth crying over."
"Crying? Who said anything about that?"
"It's an expression. I don't mean just crying. I mean the effort. Why put in the effort to make this performance if it doesn't mean anything?"
"Why put in the effort? To win, of course. Why else are you bothering to do this? If you don't want to win, you can go get a job cleaning toilets or something."
"So that's all that life is, huh? Cleaning toilets or winning? You know there's a whole world living between there."
"Maybe for you. Not that you even have to worry about such a thing. You've already grabbed your spot at the top."
"What's that mean? If you don't win you'll be stuck cleaning toilets the rest of your life? I think you're capable of more than that."
"I have to win. That's it. That's all there is for me."
He pressed his finger to his lips. "Okay. If that's true, then stop thinking about it altogether. It's better to show nothing than that."
"What?! Stop thinking about winning? You? You're really saying that?"
"I am. At least if you show nothing, some might be able to put their own meaning in for you. If you only show your desire to win, they're only going to see that hunger and be left starving at the end."
"So, you're telling me to show nothing."
"No, I'm telling you to show them something that means something other than a spot on a podium. If you can't manage that, then yes, nothing is the second best."
"How do I do that if I'm spending all my energy just trying to get through the routine?"
"Your third biggest issue. Trust. These are in no particular order by the way. You suck equally at all of them. You need to trust more."
"Trust is for the gullible."
"Trust yourself, I mean."
"Huh?"
"Go into your spin combo and don't think about what needs to go where. Feel the push of your blade against the ice, the spin nailing you in place, the rise and fall of your body, the stretch and pull of your limbs. Don't think about these things, feel them. Let them happen as they will. You've done this so many times, your body knows what to do."
Okay. Sure. Just don't think. Of course an idiot would suggest something like that. Easy enough to do at least. I pushed my blades against the ice to get some speed then carved an arc pushing the ice away from the edge of my blade to rise into my spin. Crouching down to grab my blade, I pulled my foot up from the ice. Not quite tight enough. Hold more; lift the foot higher. Damn. I'm not supposed to be thinking. Not thinking is tough. Apparently not breathing is easier. I sucked in as many tiny breaths as I could while holding my stomach tight as I rose up to pull my skate up over my head. Higher. Come on, just a little more. I brought my foot back down and stopped the spin though my head continued it through Viktor's smug smile.
"Tougher that it seems not to think, huh? Try it again with a jump combo. No quads though. Actually, no triples either. Just go back to doubles and singles. Any type of jumps you want is fine."
"Huh?! What for?"
"Trust me."
I rolled my eyes, but sped up to start the basic jump combo. At least he was using fewer words. The silt was beginning to clear. My body rolled through the combo with barely any effort. Huh. Strange.
"Excellent, Yurochka! Much better than the spins. Okay, do it again this time throwing in some triples but don't you dare start thinking."
I thrust my blades into the ice and let a deep breath out as I set up into the combo. The ease from before flowed through this combo too. I stared at the ice as the strange slickness flowing through me settled. Felt a bit like getting off a roller coaster.
"Now you're getting it. Again, with a quad."
"I've already done all the quads I'm allowed to do today."
"I don't see Yakov anywhere, do you?" I glanced up to check if he was trying to mess with me or not then made a few circles to set up a combo again. Sometimes the old man wasn't so bad.
I set up the entry for the combo. The quad soared over the ice higher than I ever had before and twisted right into the double and triple feeling like I had barely brushed the ice in between.
"Amazing! You finally look like something resembling a skater instead of a little hopping fishy!" He chuckled merrily at the scowl on my face. "Okay, so now's the time to explain and analyze. You must keep your mind clear so the sensations the ice and your body are giving your brain can be processed and reacted to. Analysis is slow and you'll never be able to catch up to what your body is doing if you're thinking about everything you have to do. You're not ready to say you've got a move until you can do it without a single thought passing through about how it's done. That's how you know it's in the subconscious part of your brain which is much faster and far more powerful than your conscious brain. That also allows your conscious brain to then think about what it is that you're trying to show with your performance. And you're a smart, talented boy. I think you can come up with something better than the utterly boring desire to win. Of course you want to win. We all do. It's not worth making your whole performance about it. It's far too obvious and obnoxious."
"Keep my mind clear. Like good ice."
"Exactly. You need clear ice under your skates and in your mind. One sheet for your body, one sheet for your performance. They're two different things; they need their own spaces. Maybe once you get that clear ice in your head you'll be able to think of something better than nothing. Blank canvases crave having something drawn on them." He swirled a pattern onto the ice with his skate, watching it form under him.
Huh. More gold in the dirt than I expected to find tonight. Clear ice. He stopped to study me with a weird expression. At least it was something other than his artificial sunshine. "Hey, Vitya. Sorry. About earlier. And thanks."
He gave a rare genuine smile. "I want to see you succeed, Yurochka. Both in life and on the ice."
"Why do you care? I'm just going to use your words to kick your ass one day, you know."
His smile didn't change. "You should keep your eyes up more, Yurochka. They're such a lovely shade of green. If they must be angry eyes, at least don't scowl at the floor."
"Ew! Are you hitting on me, old man?" I pushed back away from him.
His smile dropped and was replaced with something that looked like he was offended. At least he had sense enough for that. "Please. I'm not hitting on you. You're a child." He skated for the door.
"Wouldn't be the first time that hasn't mattered." I thought I had muttered that quietly enough, but he turned back with a horrified expression.
"Has something happened? If so, you need to tell someone. Me, if you want, or Yakov, or the police, or your grandpa. Someone. Anyone. You-"
"Calm down. It's nothing like that. Just some of the sponsors can get creepy sometimes. And people on the street. Think I'm some girl or something."
"Ah, yeah. I used to get that a lot too."
"Yeah well, you wanted to look like a girl."
"Does that mean girls deserve to have creeps after them? It shouldn't matter what you look like. If you ever have a problem with someone, especially a sponsor, tell me or Yakov immediately. They sometimes think that because they're giving you something that you owe them. It's not the kind of thing to get proud over."
"Yeah, yeah." I tried to push past him through the door but he wouldn't budge.
"I'm serious, Yura. I know you think I'm a huge idiot, but please listen to me on this one. It'll only get worse when you get to seniors and the deals get bigger. Yakov knows all about it and if you ever want to see someone get a new asshole installed, watch him when someone messes with one of his skaters. If you think he yells at us, you haven't seen anything yet. You'd probably enjoy that, so please tell him, okay? I don't want to see you get hurt."
"Yeah, okay." He stared at me for another second then stepped off the ice. I followed him into the locker room and grabbed my shoes. "Hey, why do you bother coming out here? You didn't really skate at all."
He looked up from untying his skates with his usual stupid smile. "I enjoy your company, Yurochka."
"Liar. Why do you really come?" I sat down at the other end of the bench and started taking off my skates.
"I'm not lying. I like spending time with you."
"If you're going to lie, you should at least make it a believable one."
"Why is it so hard to believe? I mean, sure, you're a lot rough around the edges, but you're not half-bad when you're not being a total dick."
"Yeah, well," I blew a huff of air to brush the hair out of my eyes as I sat back up after putting my shoes back on, "you're not half-bad when you're not being a total moron."
"Aww, my heart feels all warm and fuzzy." He jumped the distance between us and hung most of his weight around my shoulders.
"Ack! Get off me, you asshole!" I struggled to free myself from his clingy arms with no effect until I ducked out from under them and slipped off the end of the bench. With all of his weight on the end of the light bench, it flipped up and dumped him on the ground. He blinked up at me, his eyes huge, while I laughed my ass off at his karma.
He finally stopped blinking and chuckled as he struggled to his feet. If only the people knew just how ungraceful this man was off the ice and how much of an idiot he was, they might spend a fraction of a second less time worshiping him. He brushed his pants off and gave his practiced effortless laugh with a wink. Probably not. "Too bad you didn't get that on camera. It would have gone viral in seconds." Conceited asshole. "Come on, I'll give you a ride home."
I pushed him out of the way to grab my skates and throw them in my locker. "I'd rather take the bus than spend another second with you."
"Ouch. So harsh when I was just trying to be nice. Fine. Have it your way. Be safe." He put away his skates and headed out of the locker room without looking back.
Be safe. Be safe. He always said that like I'm some idiot child. He's the one more likely to do something stupid and get himself hurt. I flipped off the lights and locked the front door then headed through the parking lot with only a few yellow bulbs lighting up little patches in the dark. His car was still in the lot under one of the lights. It looked like he was fiddling with the radio. God, how long does it take that idiot to put on music? Whatever. I threw my hood up and went to go wait at the stop at the corner for the mercifully slow bus.